It’s rare for a line to be replayed within the first eleven sentences of a Minister’s speech. But in Nanaia Mahuta’s first major foreign policy address, we should treat any repetition as deliberate.
On the cusp of Waitangi Day, the second-term Ardern government’s Foreign Minister told the assemblage of diplomatic representatives that: “The principles of partnership and mutual respect embodied in the Treaty provide the foundation for how New Zealand conducts its foreign policy today.”
In returning to an almost identical set of words so speedily (according to the transcript), Mahuta must have been wanting to emphasise her main point of departure.
Mahuta is not alone today in arguing that a country’s domestic political principles should direct its engagement with the wider world.
Just a few days after her Bay of Islands address, Joe Biden told State Department staff in Washington DC that America’s recommitment to democracy at home would energise its leadership of democracies abroad. For the new US President this becomes ammunition in America’s competition with its autocratic adversaries, including what he has since called “extreme competition” with China.
But for Mahuta, conflicting relationships between states are not the big challenge at hand. Instead, New Zealand’s international opponents are the “complex issues of social exclusion, civil and racial unrest, inequality and poverty.”
That’s especially so in the Pacific, where Mahuta wants New Zealand’s focus to be “co-partnering and co-investing for resilience” against the risks of “social and economic dislocation” exacerbated by the twin challenges of Covid and climate change.
Mahuta’s call for diplomacy which is ‘intergenerational in its intent, where we put people, planet, peace and prosperity for all at the centre’ poses serious questions about an international system which prioritises the interests of states.
That’s a long way from being preoccupied with the China-US contest and what it means for the neighbourhood. As the Foreign Minister implied in a recent Australian TV interview, worrying about who is grabbing the geopolitical advantage is the antithesis of ensuring that “the Pacific not be used in a pawn in anybody else’s interests”.
The main guidance for these priorities does not come from without – how shifting correlations of international power affect New Zealand’s interests. Instead it comes from within.
Mahuta’s speech suggests that the values underpinning the “framework between the Crown and Māori” give New Zealand a voice in resolving the social, economic and political problems occurring in other countries.
Hence her argument that “by building on the values of whanaungatanga (kinship), kotahitanga (common purpose) and kaitiakitanga (stewardship and care) we can promote investment, advocacy, and co-partnering the long term resilience of the Pacific.”
This means that indigenous values and communities can and should be making more of a difference, reflected in Mahuta’s call for “a more inclusive approach to indigenous issues being a feature of our foreign policy.” It is inside national boundaries that the main benefits will be felt with “economic, social, environmental and cultural benefits to countries willing to step up to this opportunity.”
While this travels most easily for New Zealand in the Pacific, Mahuta also wants an inclusive indigenous approach to feature in Wellington’s relations with the wider world. In her speech she called for “an indigenous trade cooperation instrument with willing APEC partners,” something that is bound to be a feature of 2021 with New Zealand in the chair.
She made specific reference to New Zealand’s relationship with Canada as a promising example of “indigenous collaboration,” reflecting her North American travels as Minister for Māori Economic Development in 2019. In that same trip she also met with indigenous representatives in Chile.
Realising Mahuta’s lofty vision will test New Zealand’s readiness to take on powerful governments who insist that their abuses of human rights and targeting of minority communities are nobody else’s business.
This is an agenda for peoples. Mahuta’s call for diplomacy which is “intergenerational in its intent, where we put people, planet, peace and prosperity for all at the centre” poses serious questions about an international system which prioritises the interests of states.
Taking the new Minister’s “different approach” to its full extent would require the transformation of world politics. Even a fully competent international rules-based order, long a New Zealand dream, wouldn’t make the cut if those rules were still made by states to guide their own behaviour.
But Mahuta doesn’t take things that far. There is middle ground to be found which also begins at home.
New Zealand’s history, she explains, combines an “identity … drawn from our Polynesian heritage … a Māori world view” and “the Western institutions on which our country is founded that aligns New Zealand internationally.” Likewise an overlap between indigenous priorities and international institutions transcends Mahuta’s ministerial experiences.
Her speech recalls Labour folklore by invoking Peter Fraser’s legacy to assert that “since the founding of the United Nations we have worked alongside those who share our enduring democratic values and our fundamental interests in a rules-based order that reflects those values.” Here there is more scope for state-centric views of world affairs.
It is courtesy of Washington’s re-entry to two international institutions, the World Health Organization and the Paris climate change agreement, that Mahuta welcomes the Biden Administration. And “a rules-based trade system” characterises New Zealand’s answer to international economic recovery from Covid-19.
The same cooperative vein is found in Mahuta’s take on the Indo-Pacific: “We share the common ambition of peace and prosperity for the region” she says, “including through greater economic integration and adherence to its institutions and norms.”
There’s no hint that the relationships between China and the other two are deeply strained or that these strains are testing New Zealand’s diplomatic agility. And there is no naming of the problems which animate these interstate difficulties – from standoffs in the South China Sea to economic coercion and cyber malfeasance.
But there is no sign of the view held by New Zealand’s leading security partners that the Indo-Pacific is a cauldron of geopolitical competition. Mahuta refers to the big players but in terms of the separate bilateral partnerships New Zealand enjoys with them.
The top three in Wellington’s outlook are there: Australia, “an indispensable partner across the breadth of our interests;” the United States, a relationship which “will continue to strengthen”; and China, with whom New Zealand will “look for opportunities to work together where we are able to.”
There’s no hint that the relationships between China and the other two are deeply strained or that these strains are testing New Zealand’s diplomatic agility. And there is no naming of the problems which animate these interstate difficulties – from standoffs in the South China Sea to economic coercion and cyber malfeasance.
These omissions may dampen any remaining speculation that the New Zealand government wants to be seen as a bridge-builder between its bickering partners. Mahuta’s priority is changing what goes on inside other polities: “as we champion human rights”, one of her most ambitious lines suggests, “we also seek to extend our advocacy towards sustainable and inclusive outcomes in trade, inclusive and transparent democracy, ethical investment and social inclusion.”
Realising that lofty vision will test New Zealand’s readiness to take on powerful governments who insist that their abuses of human rights and targeting of minority communities are nobody else’s business.
Will Nanaia Mahuta’s next big speech tells us the price the Ardern government is willing to pay for these international principles? I doubt it. For that would be a real revolution in New Zealand’s foreign policy.
